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My Blogging Experience: Pet Peeves + Photo Tips

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

I have been blogging for over two years and in that time I have managed to work with some amazing brands, meet some fantastic bloggers and grow my blog until it has more followers and views that I ever thought it would. I asked on twitter a while ago, if anyone would be interested to see some posts on my experience of blogging, tips and tricks and quite a few people said yes, so this will be a mini series throughout January/February. This first post is all about my blogging pet peeves, from spam comments I receive to what puts me off following blogs; although please bear in mind that these are just my opinions!Firstly, spam comments, it is one area of blogging that everyone has to deal with and it can be quite disheartening and discouraging, especially if you are just starting out. I have had quite a few 'follow for a follow' type comments on my posts over the years and I personally think they are so rude and disrespectful! Please always feel free to leave your blog link for me to look at but don't expect me to follow because you told me to. I know most people want to gain more and more followers but that it not the way to do it; I mark those comments as spam. Recently I had one commenter who just copied and pasted a section of my post as a comment then put 'follow for a follow? xx'....no, I don't think so!Now onto blog photos, in a blogger chat on twitter recently the topic was blog photographs and everyone seemed to agree that they are very important and that although you don't necessarily need a fancy, expensive DSLR camera (however it would help) to have good quality blog photos. I use the Sony DSc-H200 which I love most of the time but it is't amazing for capturing eyeshadow looks! Photographs are so important to me when deciding whether to follow a blog, my pet peeves when it comes to blog photos are: photos that are really small, blurry/poor quality photos and long lists of blog photos that take so long to load I always just click off the page! In my opinion, investing in a good camera and learning the basics is the best starting point. Also free photo editing websites and programmes are essential for me, such as Picasa and PicMonkey both of which I use all of the time. On the whole, I make my photographs into collages which I think makes the photos look a bit more professional and it doesn't take ages to load up for the reader. I also love a clean white background to my blog photos whenever possible as it just looks more professional and clean in my opinion although that isn't easy during the autumn/winter months! #BloggerProblemsLastly, advertisements and dishonesty, I don't really like big adverts on blogs I think it looks a little tacky and messy; I only have blog buttons and small adverts with offers on my blog but if I could I would never have adverts on my blog sidebar. Another pet peeve of mine is when bloggers receive something to review but they don't disclose it, its the same with sponsored posts - I always have a disclaimer (here) and I say when something was sent for review.

I agree with a lot of these! Follow for follow comments are the most frustrating things in the world and I think that good quality photos are good. You don't even need a brilliant camera, I think just a common knowledge of composition is good, and sometimes not seeing a white background but used well is great to see as well as the professional looking white backgrounds :)Sam xxKnockoutcouture.blogspot.com

I agree with everything you say here. I get quite a few people ask, "follow for follow" on my blog and on my instagram. No. No, I shall not! A lot of those people will follow you, then a week later unfollow anyway. I think it's scummy. If your blog is true to yourself and pleasing to others, you'll naturally gain followers this way! Happy New Year to you :)xxJenny // Mish Mosh Makeup

I completely agree with the spam comment thing. Those annoying comments follow for follows are just insulting, I don't want a follow just for you to get one back! I know it's a community and I support other bloggers so much, but I would rather have 100 followers that want to read my comment that 10,000 that don't read it, but followed me so I'd follow them lol! Such a rant!

You made some interesting points on photography too I'm in the process of getting back into posting and really want to up my photos! Have a fab 2015 :)

These are some of my favorite posts to read! I agree that follow for follow comments are some of the worst. For me, the three things I go off of when I follow a blog is layout, photo quality, and content. I'm trying to experiment with my photos and blur certain objects in the background to add some color to the picture, but I truly believe taking good photos takes time :)

Like Emily said above, I love reading these type of posts! The things I look for to follow a blog, or just click off it is if: one) their design is simple and easy to look at - I personally don't like masses of colours or loads of fonts, just stick to two or three! two) It sounds a bit harsh, but if their photographs are good, like you said. I know not everyone has a DSLR camera, but they could treat their camera the same and learn the ins and outs of it to make their photos the best they can possibly be! three) If you can see they have spend time writing and editing their content. I don't like it when you can see spelling mistakes etc, I feel like you should always double check your work to make sure everything makes sense. I think this might be a long comment....

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